The Trump administration is bypassing Congress and quietly overhauling a key government program designed to protect millions of homeowners from the financial perils of flooding.

Seven months after Hurricane Harvey submerged Houston, the spotlight on the National Flood Insurance Program has dimmed and attempts by lawmakers to update it have stalled. But FEMA is using administrative powers to try to expand flood insurance coverage ahead of future storms and offset the government’s tab for destructive disasters to come.

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The moves, which rely on assistance from the private insurance industry and the broader financial markets, would address shortcomings that Harvey and other historic hurricanes laid bare. Many homeowners don’t buy insurance despite flood risks. Many who do purchase coverage overwhelm the program with claims after the most catastrophic storms, drowning it in billions of dollars of Treasury debt as FEMA tries to fulfill obligations to flood victims.

The changes underway inside the program echo proposals that lawmakers have pitched during the past year but have been unable to enact amid political gridlock over what to do — a growing source of frustration for members of Congress.

“It’s broken,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), one of the lawmakers who has been pushing flood insurance legislation without success. “We need to fix it.”

With Congress calling for change but sidelined by politics, FEMA officials have stepped into the breach, rolling out reforms before the program's 50th birthday this year.

“On the one side, more people need insurance coverage,” Roy Wright, who directs the flood program for FEMA, told POLITICO. “Secondly, there should be more private capital backing that risk.”

One change the agency will make this year: loosening restrictions on insurance companies that want to offer their own flood coverage. FEMA is lifting a "non-compete" policy that limited the ability of insurers to sell private policies if they also sold flood insurance on behalf of the government as part of its "Write Your Own" program.

Insurers have been lobbying Congress to implement the change, and they applauded FEMA for taking the initiative. Robert Gordon of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America said it "would allow companies willing to take on flood insurance risk the ability to do so."

"It's a mutual gain," Wright said of the change that would potentially expose his program to further competition from the private sector. "We need more people selling these products."

In addition, FEMA is taking a step that could relieve some pressure on the cost of government-backed flood insurance by trimming compensation the agency pays the private insurers who sell policies for the NFIP. Like the removal of the non-compete clause, it's an idea lawmakers have been debating over the last year.

At the same time, FEMA is making moves to shield the government from overwhelming payouts triggered by catastrophic hurricanes like Harvey, which forced the program to borrow money from the Treasury to cover funds owed to consumers. The flood insurance program has paid out about $10 billion in the wake of last year's storms — losses only rivaled by 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast.

Well ahead of last year’s deadly hurricane season, the program for the first time acquired reinsurance — insurance for insurers — that would provide $1 billion in coverage after a storm the scale of Harvey. The resulting payout was money the NFIP didn’t have to borrow from Treasury.

FEMA expanded its reinsurance purchase this year, and is actively weighing whether to move even deeper into financial markets by tapping other kinds of securities — a decision that’s expected to be made in the coming weeks.

The moves are just a few of the potential reforms the administration has started to implement.

Wright, who took the helm of the program three years ago, spent the early part of his tenure focused on addressing a major controversy after Hurricane Sandy that flood insurance policyholders weren't being paid fairly. He touts improvements to the program's quality controls, the way it deploys people on the ground after disasters and how it educates policyholders.

"We had been putting in place administratively a whole series of changes in the post-Sandy world, where clearly there were things in the program that needed to be fixed," he said. "If it's covered, we're going to pay it, and I think that's what people are seeing."

Attention returned to the NFIP last year when a series of powerful hurricanes coincided with the program's Sept. 30 expiration, a deadline set by Congress when it passed reform legislation in 2012. With big questions hanging over the NFIP's future, the administration sent more than a dozen proposals to lawmakers, who had already begun working on bills for the next long-term renewal.

Congress last year took care of one of the biggest asks — canceling $16 billion of the program’s debt, which by late September had hit the limit of the NFIP's $30 billion borrowing authority. It provided breathing room for the flood program, which pays hundreds of millions of dollars per year in interest to the Treasury.

But beyond forgiving the debt, Congress has been unwilling to enact additional changes. The program has coasted since last year on a series of short-term extensions tied to government funding bills.

That dynamic shifted last week when Congress decoupled the program’s expiration from that of government funding, setting up a game of chicken between the House and the Senate that will have to be resolved by the next reauthorization deadline of July 31. The bill, H.R. 1625 (115), also increased funding for flood hazard mapping and pre-disaster mitigation.

The House in November passed a five-year NFIP reauthorization bill, but the Senate has failed to act. The House legislation would remove restrictions on private flood insurance and require the program to cede risk to the financial markets, among other changes.

“I am hopeful that this puts pressure on the Senate to actually work on a bill so that we can restore solvency to the NFIP,” said Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), who negotiated the House legislation. “The Trump administration has taken cues from the House-passed bill and is implementing provisions on their own as a result of inaction in the Senate. This should send a clear signal to the Senate to act with a sense of urgency for the sake of saving the NFIP.”

Negotiations in the Senate are unresolved. The legislation falls under the jurisdiction of the Senate Banking Committee, which has been consumed with moving a landmark bank deregulation bill.

“There should be a way," Senate Banking Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said in early March. "I still hope we can get there."

Separating the flood insurance program's expiration date from government funding alarmed coastal lawmakers — the new deadline falls during hurricane season — but also disappointed some insurance industry lobbyists who are so unhappy with some of the reforms Congress has come up with that they would rather see a straight reauthorization bill without big changes.

For example, insurers who sell flood policies on behalf of the government have resisted proposals that would cut their compensation beyond what FEMA is proposing to do administratively. The firms are also concerned about additional measures proposed by coastal representatives who want to strengthen the hand of consumers in disputes over flood insurance coverage.

"The provisions being kicked around by the Louisiana and New Jersey delegations are so bad that it's not worth having any more negotiations," said one lobbyist who declined to be identified. "Better to kick the can than kick these around."